Farbenfabriken Bayer's worldwide efforts had left few
places lacking aspirin. In the United States, Bayer's giant factory produced
aspirin under "American" management. After Bayer executives were
charged with violating the Trading with the Enemies Act in August 1918,
advertisements encouraged confidence in aspirin. Karen Starko

The world has believed for almost a century that a new
and virulent virus came out of nowhere worldwide and killed millions in
1918. Two reports, one published in 2008 and the second in 2009,
lay that myth to rest for good.

The first report came as a press release on August
19, 2008, from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
(NIAID)

Bacteriologic and histopathologic results from published
autopsy series clearly and consistently implicated secondary bacterial
pneumonia caused by common upper respiratory­tract bacteria in most
influenza fatalities."

People were killed by common bacteria found in the upper
respiratory tract.

The 20 to 40 million deaths worldwide from the great
1918 Influenza ("Flu") Pandemic were NOT due to "flu"
or a virus, but to pneumonia caused by massive bacterial infection."
Engdahl

The NIAID press release did not, however, address what
caused the bacterial infections, but research by Dr. Karen Starko does.
It implicates aspirin, dovetailing with the NIAID research on
pneumonia from massive bacterial infection and goes further in also explaining
the extremely rapid deaths and in young people

Mortality was driven by 2 overlapping clinical-pathologic
syndromes: an early, severe acute respiratory distress (ARDS)-like condition,
which was estimated to have caused 10%-15% of deaths (sequential autopsy
series are lacking) [3)]; and a subsequent, aggressive bacterial pneumonia
"superinfection," which was present in the majority of deaths
[4, 5].

In looking at reports of those who died, two distinct
groups were readily apparent, based on a very distinctive time frame from
health to death:

1. people who died of pneumonia from a bacteria infection
became sick and things deteriorated at varying rates from there to death,
and

2. people who died so astoundingly fast that those deaths
became a classic part of the frightening legend of the 1918 "flu"
- people perfectly well in the morning and dead within a matter of hours.

In both groups, aspirin is now the likely causative agent.

1. For the first group, the pneumonias, aspirin
suppresses the immune system, allowing bacterial infections to take hold.
Doctors at the time were relating pneumonias to the use of aspirin.

I did not lose a single case of influenza; my death rate
in the pneumonias was 2.1%. The salycilates, including aspirin and quinine,
were almost the sole standbys of the old school and it was a common thing
to hear them speaking of losing 60% of their pneumonias.-Dudley A. Williams,
MD, Providence, Rhode Island.

There is one drug which directly or indirectly was the
cause of the loss of more lives than was influenza itself. You all know
that drug. It claims to be salicylic acid. Aspirin's history has been printed.
Today you don't know what the sedative action of salicylic acid is. It
did harm in two ways. It's indirect action came through the fact that aspirin
was taken until prostration resulted and the patient developed pneumonia.
-Frank L. Newton, MD, Somerville, Massachusetts

Three hundred and fifty cases and lost one, a neglected
pneumonia that came to me after she had taken one hundred grains of aspirin
in twenty-four hours. -Cora Smith King, MD, Washington, DC

2. And for the second group which died so precipitously,
their symptoms are consistent with aspirin overdose, and with rapid deaths
from it.

"A report from Camp Dix noted, "The disease
was a veritable plague. The extraordinary toxicity, the marked prostration,
the extreme cyanosis and the rapidity of development stamp this disease
as a distinct clinical entity heretofore not fully described. Salicylate
toxicity is often overlooked [ 59] because another condition
is present, the dose is thought to be trivial, and the symptoms (hyperventilation,
vomiting, sweating, headache, drowsiness, confusion, dyspnea, excitement
[salicylate jag], epistaxis, vertigo, pulmonary edema, and hemorrhage)
are nonspecific [34]. In 1918, differentiating progressive salicylate intoxication
from infection pathologically or clinically, "the dyspnea lasts from
a few hours to a dayfollowed by respiratory failure, circulatory collapse,
convulsions, and death" [40], was almost impossible.

"In summary, just before the 1918 death spike, aspirin
was recommended in regimens now known to be potentially toxic and to cause
pulmonary edema and may therefore have contributed to overall pandemic
mortality and several of its mysteries. Young adult mortality may be explained
by willingness to use the new , recommended therapy and the presence
of youth in regimented treatment settings (military). The lower mortality
of children may be a result of less aspirin use. The major pediatric text
[69] of 1918 recommended hydrotherapy for fever, not salicylate; its 1920
edition [70] condemned the practice of giving "coal tar products"
in full doses for reduction of fever. ... Varying aspirin use may also
contribute to the differences in mortality between cities and between military
camps.

Part II - Bayer Profit Was The First Cause

In February 1917, Bayer lost its American patent on aspirin,
opening a lucrative drug market to many manufacturers. Bayer fought back
with copious advertising, celebrating the brand's purity just as the epidemic
was reaching its peak. The New York Times

The New York Times:

"Aspirin packages were produced containing no warnings
about toxicity and few instructions about use. In the fall of 1918, facing
a widespread deadly disease with no known cure, the surgeon general and
the United States Navy recommended aspirin as a symptomatic treatment,
and the military bought large quantities of the drug.

"The Journal of the American Medical Association
suggested a dose of 1,000 milligrams every three hours, the equivalent
of almost 25 standard 325-milligram aspirin tablets in 24 hours. This is
about twice the daily dosage generally considered safe today.

Starko's research shows that "Aspirin Advertisements
in August 1918 and a Series of Official Recommendations for Aspirin in
September and Early October Preceded the Death Spike of October 1918."

"The number of deaths in the United increased steeply,
peaking first in the Navy in late September, then in the Army in early
October, and finally in the general population in late October [67].

Of tremendous significance is a single sentence
in Karen Starko's work.

"Homeopaths, who thought aspirin was a poison, claimed
few deaths [11, 48]."

That sentence stands out against a backdrop of millions
of the deaths caused by Bayer and the pharmaceutical industry of the day.

Homeopathy threatened pharmaceutical industry profit.
Worse, the homeopathic doctors criticized coal tar based synthetic
drugs as a class, the very basis of the pharmaceutical industry.

Aspirin and the other coal tar products are condemned
as causing great numbers of unnecessary deaths. The omnipresent aspirin
is the most pernicious drug of all. It beguiles by its quick action of
relief of pain, a relief which is but meretricious. In several cases aspirin
weakened the heart, depressed the vital forces, increased the mortality
in mild cases and made convalescence slower. In all cases it masks the
symptoms and renders immeasurably more difficult the selection of the curative
remedy. Apparently aspirin bears no curative relation to any disease and
it ought to be prohibited. -Guy Beckly Stearns,
MD, New York

Worst of all, using only natural (thus un-patentable)
substances, homeopaths saved the lives of almost everyone who came to them
during the 1918 calamity. This threatened to expose that the new
coal-tar based synthetic drugs (derived from the powerful oil industry),
the basis for a giant new investment industry, were in fact disastrous
medically. And that had to be stopped.

[In 1918] The Rockefeller Foundation ( shortly afterwards connected
to Bayer) uses the Spanish flu epidemic ­ and the media (that it already
controlled by this time) ­ to start a witch-hunt on all forms
of medicine that were not covered by its patents.

From The History of the Pharmaceutical Industry

"The Rockefeller Foundation was the front organization
for a new global business venture .... This new venture was called the
pharmaceutical investment business. Donations from the Rockefeller Foundation
went only to medical schools and hospitals, which had become missionaries
of patented pharmaceutical drugs, developed by a new breed of companies
that manufactured patented, synthetic drugs. These birth hours of the pharmaceutical
investment business are all matters of historical record and ­ among
others ­ are documented in the book "Rockefeller Medicine Men"
by Richard Brown

1. (Annexure 'Rockefeller Medicine Men')

"These newly discovered natural molecules had only
one disadvantage: they were non-patentable. Thus, already in its first
decades of existence, the pharmaceutical investment business faced a mortal
threat: vitamins and other micronutrients promoted as public health programmes
would have prohibited the development of any sizable investment business
based on patented synthetic drugs. The elimination of this unwanted competition
from micronutrients and other natural therapies became a question of survival
for the young pharmaceutical investment business

"To promote public acceptance of his "new medicine"
as the philanthropic umbrella of the newly created pharmaceutical investment
industry with patented drugs ­ the Rockefeller controlled media used the Spanish
flu epidemic of 1918, to start a campaign against all forms of non-patented
medicine and discredit them as "unscientific." Within the next
15 years essentially all medical schools in the U.S., all influential
hospitals and, most significantly, the "American Medical Association"
became part of this strategy to align the entire health care sector under
the control of the pharmaceutical investment business."

This witch-hunt, with Bayer in a leading role, has
a long and violent history and continues today where
the pharmaceutical industry is now moving to draconian measures, with the
banning of all herbal remedies across EU starting April 2001,
with the attempt to criminalize homeopaths and all natural practitioners
including midwives in NC, with the banning of IV vitamin C (because
it is a powerfully effective yet gentle treatment for
cancer) in December 2010, and a plan in Australia to ban nature itself.

"The bird and mammalian species took hold on the
earth approximately 65 million years ago, i.e. the same time as the dinosaurs
went extinct. So did the flu and other viruses of all the surviving species.
Since then, all those viruses have been mating and mutating among themselves
without the sky caving in due to any infection. Therefore, any talk of
a bird or swine flu pandemic with the probability to kill millions of people
is either a purposeful or hallucinogenic nonsense to make profit on the
backs of the innocent following."

Shiv Chopra, microbiologist, vaccine expert

The CDC claims it has reconstructed the "virulent"
1918 virus.

"CDC researchers and their colleagues have successfully
reconstructed the influenza virus that caused the 1918-19 flu pandemic,
which killed as many as 50 million people worldwide."

Whatever the CDC reconstructed, it was not what killed
millions of people in 1918-19. CDC appears unaware that the NIAID has
proven that it was not a virus or flu but common upper respiratory bacteria
and massive infection that killed millions.

But Bayer was responsible through its vaccine division,
Baxter, for sending out to 18 countries seasonal flu vaccines in 2009 that
contained live avian virus, a bioweapon, which could have killed millions.
Had it not been for single lab tech discovering the vaccines were
lethal through injecting ferrets which all died, the Bayer's vaccines could
have potentially set off a pandemic that nature has never caused. In
1918, the convergence of a toxic drug, massive corporate advertising, and
government, military and medical pressure to use the drug, led to millions
of deaths. That combination of groups has come together again, this
time behind vaccines.

Despite Bayer's 2009 seasonal vaccines containing a bio-weapon
and there being no reasonable explanation, Bayer was not charged, not even
with negligence, but instead was immediately selected by the WHO to produce
the H1N1 vaccines. Those vaccines were promoted strongly by the government
and the CDC, even as the CDC itself acknowledged the H1N1 vaccines could
be predicted to maim or kill 30,000 people in the US.

The question, though, is why are vaccines being promoted
at all for a pandemic "like the 1918 flu" since the deaths then
were not caused by a flu?

Given that it was common bacteria, the following CDC's
statements make no sense.

"This report describes the successful reconstruction
of the influenza A (H1N1) virus responsible for the 1918 "Spanish
flu" pandemic and provides novel information about the properties
that contributed to its exceptional virulence. ....

"The influenza pandemic of 1918-19 killed an estimated
20 to 50 million people worldwide, many more than the subsequent pandemics
of the 20th century. The biological properties that confer virulence to
pandemic influenza viruses were poorly understood. Research to better
understand how the individual genes of the 1918 pandemic influenza virus
contribute to the disease process could provide important insights into
the basis of virulence. ..."

The CDC is putting out a view of the 1918 deaths
which doesn't fit with either historical or biologic data. Nor does their
"virulent virus" view answer the lingering questions around 1918
- such as why young people died or why people died so quickly. Both
are answered by Dr. Karen Starko's work on aspirin use and overdose
during 1918..

Though no virus was responsible for the deaths, the CDC
has another problem. There has been no evidence showing the reconstruction
of the virus, either. German virologist Stefan Lanka points to the source
of the story on reconstruction and to missing pieces in the virus:

"Dr Jeffery Taubenberger, from whom the allegation
of a reconstruction of the 1918 pandemic virus originates, works for
the US-American army and has worked for more than 10 years on
producing, on the basis of samples from different human corpses, short
pieces of gene substance by means of the biochemical multiplication technique
PCR. Out of the multitude of produced pieces he has selected those which
came closest to the model of the genetic substance of the idea of an influenza
virus, and has published these.

"In no corpse however was a virus seen or isolated
or was a piece of gene substance from a such isolated. By means of the
PCR technique there were produced out of nothing pieces of gene substance
whose earlier existence in the corpse could not be demonstrated.

"If viruses had been present, then these could have
been isolated, and out of them their gene substance could have been isolated
too; there would have been no necessity for anyone to produce laboriously,
by means of PCR technique - with clearly a swindle intention - a patchwork
quilt of a model of the genetic substance of the idea of an influenza virus.

"How can a layman check on this?

"About these short pieces of gene substance, which
in the sense of genetics are not complete and which do not even suffice
for defining a gene, it is being maintained that they together would make
up the entire gene substance of an influenza virus.

"In order to see through this swindle one only has
to be able to add up the published length pieces, in order to ascertain
that the sum of the lengths of the individual pieces, which supposedly
makes up the entire viral gene substance of the purported influenza virus,
does not make up the length of the idea of the genome of the influenza
virus model.

"Even simpler it is to ask in what publication you
can find the electron microscope photo of this supposedly reconstructed
virus. There is no such publication."

In not dealing with either the bacterial infection
or the role of aspirin in causing the 1918 deaths and by continuing the
"virulent virus myth," the CDC is promoting the need
for anti-viral drugs (which it mentions by name), as well as the development
of vaccines, yet none of them would be appropriate for dealing with what
killed people during 1918.

The CDC continues in its false promotion of 1918 deaths
being flu related, and ignores common respiratory bacteria the NIAID hs
shown was the source, and the global medical blunder of using toxic aspirin:

"Are current antivirals and vaccines effective against
the 1918 virus?

"Yes. Two types of antiviral drugs, rimantadine
(Flumadine) and oseltamivir (Tamiflu), have been shown to be effective
against influenza viruses similar to the 1918 virus. Vaccines containing
the 1918 HA or other subtype H1 HA proteins were effective in protecting
mice against the 1918 virus. In fact, the current influenza vaccine provided
some level of protection against the 1918 virus in mice.

"Are new prophylactics and therapeutics against
the 1918 virus under way?

The reconstruction of the 1918 virus will enable CDC
to pursue development of a vaccine candidate reference virus that would
provide optimal protection against this or similar viruses."

The CDC's characterization of 1918 as a time when a virulent
virus threatened all mankind is patently untrue. That false view
was used by George Bush to engender terror that a new virulent
virus - related to the 1918 virus - was going to occur and kill millions
again.

Why does the CDC persist in the myth despite evidence
to the contrary? Eschewing motives, one might only suggest some effects
of projecting the terrifying myth that millions of people could die from
virus:

1. distraction from the hard reality that
natural treatments were the only effective treatments during
1918.

2. cloaking of Bayer, aspirin and the
industry''s role in the deaths.

3. sales of billions in anti-viral drugs and vaccine
development.

4. increased financial power to the pharmaceutical
industry to control media and influence government.

4. increased illnesses and deaths from chemical
pharmaceutical agents, one of the highest risk factors.

10. an open door to use of "pandemic
emergency" to justify martial law.

The truth - that medical authorities using Bayer aspirin
(and generic aspirin) killed so many millions of people that
those deaths became one the most terrifying events in human history -
fundamentally threatens a global multi-trillion dollar investment
industry built around unquestioned "medical expertise" and
their use of synthetic drugs.

But the fuller truth contains something more dire for
the pharmaceutical industry than "only" the millions of deaths
they caused because something else of great significance happened then
as well - non-industrial medicine, those using organic substances, saved
people from death. 1918 set up a global test comparing millions of
people, those who were treated by industrial medicine and those treated
by organic medicine. The first group died in unfathomable numbers.
The second group almost all lived.

That reality shines out from 1918, focusing the world's
attention backwards historically to the rise of the synthetic chemical
pharmaceutical industry where once mankind had only used nature. What
stands out is the failure and toxicity of one of the industry's
oldest and most trusted products - to a calamitous degree. Add to that
Bayer's global advertising of its toxic product, and government and media
influence, and the it enlarged the losses from deaths to a level never
seen before. Their product, political and financial power and media
influence, combined to produce so many millions of deaths that it competes
with the black plague in number of deaths - 20 to 50 million deaths during
1918 and 1919 versus 25 to 75 million during the course of many years of
the bubonic plague.

But that single synthetic pharmaceutical product has
by now far outstripped the number of deaths of the most infamous disease
in history since, as a later section on Bayer will show, the deaths have
not stopped even up to today and are of epidemic proportions.

Natural health practitioners are the ones who saved lived
during 1918 while aspirin killed. Today the government is suppressing
access to natural health products which have no lethality and saved lives
during 1918, in favor of predictably lethal vaccines, the need for which
is based on an immensely misdirecting myth.

In light of the 1918 deaths from Bayer's invention
of aspirin (a coal tar-based synthetic) and Bayer's and other manufacturers' vaccines (synthetic,
even genetically engineered), an automatic reassessment of natural
versus synthetic treatments is triggered.

Life or death is at stake for humanity in that reassessment

Part IV - The Deaths Continue

A confluence of events created a "perfect storm"
for widespread salicylate toxicity. The loss of Bayer's patent on aspirin
in February 1917 allowed many manufacturers into the lucrative aspirin
market. Official recommendations for aspirin therapy at toxic doses were
preceded by ignorance of the unusual nonlinear kinetics of salicylate (unknown
until the 1960s), which predispose to accumulation and toxicity; tins and
bottles that contained no warnings and few instructions; and fear of "Spanish"
influenza, an illness that had been spreading like wildfire. ... Karen
Starko

Given the role that it played in the millions of 1918
deaths, a further look at aspirin is in order.

Bayer aspirin was one of the earliest of drugs from the
pharmaceutical industry, dependent on the oil industry, and has become
the most commonly used and trusted drug. As such, it exemplifies
the displacement of natural treatments by synthetic drugs.

Is Bayer aspirin safe today?

During 1918, repeatedly, first hand medical accounts point
to aspirin as the source of pneumonias.

"I had a package handed to me containing 1,000 aspirin
tablets, which was 994 too many. I think I gave about a half dozen. I could
find no place for it. My remedies were few. I almost invariably gave Gelsemium andBryonia.
I hardly ever lost a case if I got there first, unless the patient had
been sent to a drug store and bought aspirin, in which event I was likely
to have a case of pneumonia on my hands. -J. P. Huff, MD, Olive Branch,
Kentucky.

"In reading the accounts of the epidemic it seems
that most of the deaths were caused by a virulent pneumonia that was especially
devastating to those who depressed their system with analgesics-the most
common being aspirin. .

"The Physician from whom I first learned homeopathy,
Raymond Seidel, MD, HMD, said that he decided to be a homeopathic doctor
during the flu epidemic when he was working as a delivery boy for a homeopath
in New Jersey. Raymond Seidel told me that he decided to become a homeopathic
doctor when he was a ten-year old delivery boy for a local homeopath. He
said, "I saw that the people who were taking aspirin were dying, about
half those who were drinking a lot were dying, and those that received
homeopathic remedies were living."

Aspirin was the first of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatories,
the others not available until 1955 when Tylenol was first marketed.
They are the most commonly used drug on the market, sold over the
counter and by prescription.

For Bayer and the pharmaceutical industry, they are the
unquestioned basics of their industry.

Yet they all routinely kill.

From Toxic and Deadly NSAIDs, an Investigative Report by
Roman Bystrianyk

"Over 100,000 people are hospitalized for GI bleeding
and of those 16,500 die every year. And these values are considered "conservative".

"Also the figures only include prescription
NSAIDs used to treat only arthritis and only in the United States. If prescription
and over the counter NSAID-related hospitalizations and death rates were
counted for not only arthritis, but for all conditions, and throughout
the world, the figures would no doubt be enormous. Taking those figures
and applying them over the many years that this class of drug that has
been available since the early 1970s and the numbers would be horrific.
And yet, no study to date has attempted to quantify these figures.
A graph from the same article shows this alarming statistic relative to
other causes of deaths.

[Aspirin, the first of this class of drugs, has existed
since the late 1800s. How many people has it alone killed?]

Figure 1. U.S. Mortality Data for Seven Selected Disorders
in 1997. A total of 16,500 patients with rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis
died from the gastrointestinal toxic effects of NSAIDs. Data are from the
National Center for Health Statistics and the Arthritis, Rheumatism, and
Aging Medical Information System. 3

"Looking at this information from another perspective
we can compare yearly estimated NSAID deaths since 1991 with the number
of murders committed with firearms each year in the United States and with
the number of U.S. Forces killed in Vietnam if that war was being fought
in the 1990s instead of 1961-1972. Although no data shows the exact number
of NSAID deaths each year 7,600 deaths were estimated in 1991 and 16,500
deaths were estimated in 1998. The graph presented here assumes a linear
increase in the number of deaths, however the actually numbers are unknown.
Once again the 16,500 NSAID deaths per year is considered conservative
and does not include over the counter medications or prescriptions for
other conditions other than arthritis.

Figure 2. Comparison of NSAID related deaths with yearly
murders with firearms and number of US forces killed in Vietnam. 4

"Another important observation is that most people
have no warning signs that these drugs are causing them internal damage
before they ending up in the hospital with a serious medical condition.
And as we have seen from the statistics, approximately 10% of these hospitalizations
end in death. ...

"Even aspirin, the first NSAID that was synthesized
over 100 years ago by Felix Hoffman at Bayer industries is not free of
risk. And considering that aspirin is being highly recommended to reduce
the incidence of heart disease we must consider the gastrointestinal damage
being caused as well.

"We found that no particular dose of aspirin between
75 mg and 300 mg daily currently used in cardiovascular prophylaxis is
free of risk of causing bleeding from gastric or duodenal ulcers.
Even very low (75 mg) doses of aspirin reportedly caused gastric bleeding
in volunteers. Some 10,000 episodes of ulcer bleeding occur in people
aged 60 and over each year in England and Wales. ... It [sic] may be deduced
that 900 of the 10,000 episodes could be associated with and ascribed to
prophylactic aspirin use. A general change to low doses (75 mg) of
aspirin would not eliminate the risk .... [Emphasis added]

"Unfortunately the risk of hospitalization and death
is not the only possibility from taking these types of drugs. Other studies
also indicate that the risk of Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) while using
NSAIDs is also quite substantial. One author suggested that the number
of deaths could be similar to those that are being seen with gastrointestinal
bleeding. If so the numbers of deaths attributed to NSAIDs would increase
dramatically from the already large figure of 16,500.

"In this study we found that recent use of NSAIDs
by elderly patients doubles the odds of being admitted to hospital with
an episode of CHF [Congestive Heart Failure]. The estimated relative risk
for first admission with heart failure, and the risk of this outcome was
increased substantially by NSAID use in those with a history of heart disease.
Assuming the association between use of NSAIDs and CHF is unconfounded,
the disease burden attributable to these drugs may be large ­ approaching
the levels of morbidity and mortality that we have previously documented
for serious upper gastrointestinal complications of NSAID use in NSW [New
South Wales]." 8

The following statement about all NSAIDS (including Bayer
aspirin) could as easily characterize what happened during 1918, including
the complete silence surrounding Bayer's drug, aspirin (and the generic
versions), that is now implicated in killing millions of people during
1918.

... "NSAIDs are truly a silent epidemic that have
caused a tremendous amount of pain and death. Public
knowledge of this tragedy is virtually non-existent with an enormous
amount of information written primarily existing within the sanctuary of
medical libraries. Pharmaceutical companies still market and promote
worldwide sales of these toxic substances and governmental agencies have
done nothing of any substance to alert the public." [Emphasis added.]

Part V - A New Set Of Questions About 1918

The 20 to 50 million deaths during 1918 have long been
attributed to a virulent new virus but NIAID has said that common upper
respiratory bacteria was responsible, not a new virus.

There was no new deadly virus but there was something new
in 1918 - toxic aspirin.